Effects of Fire Frequency on Woody Plant Composition and Functional Traits in a Wet Savanna Ecosystem

Table 3

Stand structure, diversity metrics, and functional diversity indices measured in high fire frequency (HFF), medium fire frequency (MFF), and low fire frequency (LFF) (mean ± standard error).

Metric/measurement	Fire regime			F2,27
	HFF	MFF	LFF
Stand structure
Hmax (m)	5.67 ± 0.11^a	6.02 ± 0.17^a,b	8.22 ± 0.19^b	22.49	0.0001
Woody plant density (species/ha)	492.76 ± 67.23^a,b	476.92 ± 23.22^a	542.44 ± 74.89^b	16.72	0.004
Resprouting capacity	48 ± 4.26^a	52 ± 5.73^a	53.07 ± 3.28^a	1.69	0.41
Relative bark thickness (mm/cm)	18.84 ± 0.63^a	9.87 ± 0.68^b	6.28 ± 0.76^c	87.17	0.02
Tree diversity metrics
Species richness	4.40 ± 0.45^a	4.3 ± 0.47^a	5.80 ± 0.44^a	3.39	0.051
Shannon–Wiener H′	1.31 ± 0.15^a	1.32 ± 0.11^a	1.57 ± 0.08^a	1.55	0.232
Pielou’s evenness J	0.92 ± 0.02^a	0.92 ± 0.01^a	0.76 ± 0.02^b	4.34	0.023
Functional diversity
FRic	1.1 ± 0.001^a	0.09 ± 0.03^a	0.15 ± 0.03^b	7.24	0.003
RaoQ	0.05 ± 0.01^a	0.03 ± 0.01^a	0.05 ± 0.001^a	2.44	0.107
Functional redundancy	1.26 ± 0.15^a	1.28 ± 0.11^a	1.52 ± 0.08^a	4.62	0.021

Means with different superscripts in the same row are significantly different (Tukey’s HSD post hoc ).